The widespread use of social media in the past decade has created many avenues for people to express their feelings to others that have similar interests of which video games are a major part of in the online hemisphere. Video games have many aspects about them that appeals to all kinds of people, whether you’re looking for a relaxing experience, something that gets your blood pumping, or just a fun game to mess around with friends, there’ll be something that will draw someone to a particular game. As video games are an inherently interactive medium compared to others such as books, movies, or music as unlike the ones just mentioned it directly requires someone being a “player” for it to function, thus how a game crafts it’s events and mechanics with player interactivity is imperative to a good and impactful impression (Davies 2)

YouTube entering the mainstream as the new entertainment app fundamentally allows any individual, no matter their previous standing social clout, to broadcast their content to many on the wider web through their videos. Since it’s inception, YouTube and video games have always had a good relationship, as playing video games lends to all sorts of entertainment possibilities for an audience depending on the game and who it’s for, and what kind of “reactions” it can bring; for example a game like Fortnite is an online competitive type game that has you face off against 100 different players that also comes with an inherit randomness factor to it as the items you grab will always change in each game; while the gameplay is seemingly more geared towards the hardcore audience, there is in fact much more mass appeal to it that is why it has the success that it does, the cartoony art style, fast and simple gameplay, it’s loop of playing new matches over and over makes it both a joy to play and to watch for a crowd. “Livestreamers” even play the game live as it’s going on and stream it to their fans, who they can interact with and can even influence the decisions of how they play as it goes on; streamers such as Ninja (real name Richard Blevins) have made massive careers (Saletta 2) by drawing attention to other people, both of the skills of playing the game and the reactions to what goes on in the game itself.

Sources:

Davies, Thomas https://medium.com/rta902/video-games-and-the-impact-of-social-media-d040725a7ae6

Saletta, Emma https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12759011/Twitch-streamer-Ninja-shows-earnings-140K-month.html

At the tail end of February 2020, the spread of the COVID-19 virus would begin and so the start of this worldwide pandemic. Around the world, businesses, public places, and those within their homes would be told to quarantine in fear of spreading the virus without having a way to yet combat it. As billions of people and families were put in isolation, options for in-person social interaction had become severely limited; causing a large rise in the use of social media to bridge the gap in a foundation that suddenly crumbled.

As for this essay, I spoke to Dan (real name kept hidden for privacy purposes) who was 22 years old as a college student during the pandemic and 25 years old as a college graduate now, of the ways he used social media during Quarantine and how that affected him. When I interviewed him, he told me that he really didn’t use any social media platforms besides Reddit and Discord, however he’d later start using Facebook more often during the middle to end of quarantine. Reddit is arguably more of an “entertainment” platform, like Twitter it’s primarily used to talk about certain interests, but unlike it it specifically has “communities” to talk in based on almost any topic that already exists, thus is much less “person oriented”. On the opposite side, Discord is much closer to something like Skype, a service built around talking to those you most likely already know through group chats and video calls, primarily over video games. Dan already had a group of friends since around high school that all shared relatively similar interests of games, so he didn’t feel too isolated when it came to his relationships as they could always go online with each other and have a good time that way. However, talking to someone over the phone is never a full replacement to seeing them in person no matter how it’s set up, Dan did still say that there was that sense of loneliness throughout the pandemic, while he did have his family, not being able to directly hang out with his friends for months on end did start to take a toll on his mental well being at the start but things slowly got better for him once more restrictions started being lifted and they were able to meet up personally again.

Debatably however, the group most affected by the pandemic were those born in Generation Z (Age range 11-26); being barred from schools meant a large part of the youth’s social activity had effectively been barred off and with no other way to interact with people like them, they turned to the next obvious solution: social media.

In the year the COVID-19 pandemic started, I was fifteen as a freshman starting high school; many of the people I was good friends with in middle school went to the one other high school around my area so automatically, I already felt as an outcast being someone who had little to zero previous relationships at this new school compared to most around me. For both pre and post COVID, I was already using Twitter as my main social media app; one of it’s main appeals as a service is it’s quick but dense stream of posts, letting users discuss anything they wish in a short and concise manner to an audience ranging from tiny or massive, both depending on how you either curate your feed and how much people share your “tweets”. Another difference compared to it’s contemporaries was that the platform didn’t necessarily revolve around the idea of putting your face out there, thus you weren’t limited by previous connections and in a way you could build a new “persona” that wasn’t limited by anything about your relationships in real life, such as it being much easier to indulge about hobbies and specific interests with others who do the same, while still being able to express parts of yourself if you so choose. Of course Twitter’s “semi-anonymity” was not always a great thing, as many people used the site to either to create arguments, or to “troll” and simply make the site more miserable; while I still have many fond memories of using Twitter to make new friends and help alleviate some of the loneliness in the quarantine, I also distinctly remember it being the source of much of the “misery” as well, many world changing events occurred during 2020 that had people talking from all sides, many either sounded hopeless or were simply throwing along their own cruel jokes to go with and paired with the constant news feed, so with both the good and the bad, it was difficult to stay away regardless.

An article discussing the developments and complications from the several methods of communications throughout the last century,  published in Fall 2021 titled “How to Fix Social Media” The New Atlantis, written by Nicholas Carr. In this article, Carr argues that social media companies simply have too much power in our current social climate for them to be as unregulated as they are.

Summary-

In the days before the internet existed,  the government was already having complications with the idea of limiting privacy and free speech, attempting to keep up with both our developing technological advances and the rapid change of societal standards. Before the smartphone was even a concept, you can say that for a long period of time, communication technology were led in two distinct categories separate from one another, “a ‘one-to-one’ system designed for direct conversation and a ‘one-to-many’ system for listeners to tune into a broadcast.”, not only were these two handled by separate devices, but they also came with their own principles they were expected to follow as well.

In the article “How to Fix Social Media”, Nicholas Carr remarks that personal communication prided itself on privacy, meaning that no one besides the recipients involved would be allowed to share their conversations unless they were given the permission to do so. There was already legal precedent for privacy laws under indirect means of communication by 1878 with the Fourth Amendment protecting letters and papers against “unreasonable searches and seizures”; once the Telephone started taking over Americans’ homes, the anxiety of private conversation being listened in on or used from a third party began to rise, thus a similar law for phones followed suit, that being the Communications Act of 1934, making every telecommunication provider treat each message sent over wire and otherwise the same without it being stopped or wiretapped. Around the start of the 20th Century another groundbreaking piece of technology would be unveiled to the world called the radio, allowing for people to freely broadcast their voice across the airwaves. It’s influence was heavy as talk shows and radio stations paved the way for how Americans would consume entertainment and news in the modern era, yet despite the praise it too had it’s detractors and ones arguably harder to combat, primarily the fear of misinformation and political bias; the famed example of spreading misinformation through the airwaves would be the situation that caused radio laws to get passed in the first place. In 1912, the Titanic would collide with an iceberg, causing the ship and 1,500 people to sink with it, as attempts were made to rescue the passengers, many “fake” radio messages clogged up the radio which inevitably prevented actual communication from rescuers trying to rescue those on board. Once the public heard of the controversy, it would spark almost immediate action in the government not long after as Congress created the Radio Act of 1912 in response which hindered the ability of these fake messages as only those with a license from the Department of Congress would be able to broadcast over the airwaves. With a new age of entertainment and regulation born for the industry, a new looming problem had come up in the public eye, that being these new influencers using their platforms for “nebulous deeds”.

In the current era of internet, the companies who run the websites and apps that control the current social media hemisphere no longer abide by the regular rules that were previously enforced by the government and legislation, as many of these companies defend themselves by  saying that “they are in the technology business, not the media business” but as social media develops further and become more intrinsically tied into our daily lives through algorithms controlling the information we get a part of, they need to be held responsible for the content that is shown and allowed on their platforms. Furthermore, social media does not abide by the secrecy-of-correspondence rules of the past, as part of taking data, they also inadvertently get to look at the contents of messages, personal or otherwise and use them for advertising purposes as well.  Carr proposes that social media companies should act as the common carriers of the past, not being allowed to look at personal messages to one another for any reason unless the user specifically allows them, working as a “closed-loop system”, this would also extend to devices such as Alexa and other automated programs as they wouldn’t be able to store data the user doesn’t give them, like many of the older typewriter machines.

……………………………………………………………………………………………. ……………………………

Response-

With the historical background set as the core of his article, Carr attempts to suggest that social media companies are corrupt by presenting the context of how indirect communication were used, the concerns, and iterated upon. Most of the article revolves around this underlying message that the older ways we communicated was much more secure and less manipulative than they are now with how social media companies treat their own platforms, and while that may be true, as proven by his evidence each of those came with obstacles and hurdles of their own before they were truly considered to be “proper” with the public in mind, like the radio taking a disaster such as the Titanic to occur before making any kind of regulation on it. Furthermore, it took years of panic about the idea of someone listening in on private conversations for the telephone to get the same treatment that letters did with it’s “secrecy of correspondence”, proving that these regulations take time to be made and that the concerns of the people will not go unheard by their government. To follow up, having the option to be exempt from data being collected that to be sent to an algorithm isn’t inherently a bad thing, it could cause issues with the overall user experience when everyone exempts themselves from it. Search engines such as Google cannot functionally run well and would be mostly pointless if no data is taken because these platforms are only improved upon through users asking all sorts of questions that need to be answered using the wider web, if these questions were only asked through Google’s already pre-set database, then the pool of results would be remarkably small and would have to be updated manually to extremely often to even try to get the right results. While there is still much that needs to be done about changing our current internet laws, allowing everyone to be extremely private about the way they use it, it simply isn’t realistic with how it is setup, it would require major overhauls that we don’t currently have a real solution for right now.

As we currently live in the 21th century, we are experiencing rapid progress of the technology around us with every new day as computer engineers are constantly pushing the boundaries of just what can be achieved with the devices we hold in our hands, going past even the confines of science fiction. However as we move closer and closer to this “futuristic world”, we must also examine how our technology will soon affect us; one of these groundbreaking advances of tech has been the topic of debate in the past recent years, as it’s stirred controversy on how ethical it really is and it’s potential consequences it will have in the future, that being facial recognition software.

Some of the benefits of facial recognition comes from a faster and more convenient user experience like new IPhones allowing for simple unlock access just by looking at the screen yet it goes beyond that, such as Mastercard now allowing people to make payments through using their face alone, skipping the process of using a card and making it more secure in the process, or cameras at an airport that scans travelers’ faces who are already documented into the databases, thus making the transition of coming in or out of the country much quicker (Mekinec section 3). Arguably the most important uses of facial recognition comes from the ability to combat crime risks, whether it being able to track down a potential culprit faster through the use of cameras or a grocery mart blocking previous shoplifters from entering their store (Satariano p.14), law enforcement and businesses alike now keep databases that stores people’s faces in order to find perpetrators to crimes that have happened or prevent losses from further crimes to happen.

Of course these come with their own drawbacks and potential ramifications that many groups have been advocating against for the past 20 years with some going as far to file legal complaints, arguing that there is an “Orwellian invasion of privacy” (Bowyer p.1) that is imminent. Typically one of the main arguments it has going against it is it’s use of taking “data” without any consent of the user themselves; facial recognition software requires taking biometric data i.e. unique physical characteristics, and storing it to be used whenever the need arrives. With personal electronics such as phone or a PC, there’s typically a “Terms and Conditions” section that will tell the user how their data will be used before the software can actually be used with the user’s face, however when it comes to public places there is no such protection that a citizen can be exempt from, by entering a store with cameras that detect faces you are essentially agreeing to whatever that store’s policy on facial recognition simply by stepping inside. One major issue that comes with that is that computers, or rather the A.I. that’s being trained to detect faces and mark them as possible “suspects”, cannot actually make nuanced decisions that a human would like determining when an error occurs in the system, for example, a woman in Bristol, England was barred from entering a supermarket after being wrongfully flagged by Facewatch as a shoplifter 10 months beforehand, the company would later apologize to the woman after facing legal pressure, saying it was a case of “mistaken identity.” (Satariano p.20). This would not be the last time facial recognition software would cause a mistake revolving one person’s identity for another in the case of a crime, a middle-aged Maryland resident by the name of Alonzo Sawyer would be wrongfully convicted of a much more serious crime of assault when a woman reported that a man repeatedly punched her in the face before running off; law enforcement used public cameras of the area and determined that the suspect was a “slender black man whose face was partially obscured” and would follow up by analysts using a “facial recognition search” that was given several characteristics similar to that of the perpetrator and ended up with the wrongful arrest of Sawyer, despite the victim and multiple corroborators saying it wasn’t him. (Press p.2) Police officials defend their investigations through use of facial recognition by saying that they’re meant to be used to give them leads rather than being the entire investigation itself but there are still many documented cases in recent memory where someone was convicted of a crime they didn’t commit solely based off facial recognition searches (Press p.12), of which many are caused by the inherent biases of the program that come from a lack of training from it’s algorithms with certain races or other physical characteristics (Mekinec section 8).

We can certainly celebrate the technological advances and simple convenience that comes with facial recognition software, however we must come to understand that it is not perfect and without careful eyes watching over it, it may have more downsides than upsides, such as using biometric data without consent. While facial recognition still has the hypothetical ability to catch people for doing crimes it has also has the equal chance of putting people in jail for crimes they didn’t commit based off of an arguably flawed search system. Like all of technology, it still can improve as time goes on and become more beneficial and ethical to everyone in the process, however as it stands right now, we may still need to wait for that time to come.

List of sources:

Mekinec, Dan. “The benefits of facial recognition software.” Visage Technology, 8-9-23, https://visagetechnologies.com/benefits-of-face-recognition/

Satariano, Adam and Hill, Kashimir. “Barred from Grocery Stores by Facial Recognition.” NY Times, 6-28-23, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/28/technology/facial-recognition-shoplifters-britain.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Press, Ayal. “Does A.I. Lead Police To Ignore Contradictory Evidence?” The New Yorker, 11-13-23, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/20/does-a-i-lead-police-to-ignore-contradictory-evidence

Bowyer, Kevin. W, “Face Recognition Techonlogy: Security versus Privacy” Spring 2004, https://www3.nd.edu/~kwb/Bowyer_Tech_Soc_2004.pdf

Sources:

https://medium.com/rta902/video-games-and-the-impact-of-social-media-d040725a7ae6

https://www.juegostudio.com/blog/how-the-internet-of-things-impacts-game-development#:~:text=IoT%20in%20the%20gaming%20industry,an%20incredibly%20realistic%20gaming%20environment.

https://nerdbot.com/2019/05/21/how-is-social-media-affecting-the-gaming-industry/

https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/fighting-game-growth-2021/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337144821_The_Impact_of_Social_Media_on_Video_Game_Communities_and_the_Gaming_Industry

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2021/03/16/why-the-gaming-industry-could-be-the-new-social-media/

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/impact-social-media-sports-gaming-varsha-mittal#:~:text=In%20the%20gaming%20world%2C%20social,and%20grow%20their%20personal%20brand.

My main question would be:

“How did Social Media affect you during the COVID-19 lockdown?”

My follow up questions would then be:

• “What platforms did you use?”
• “What age did you start using social media and your age when Covid started”
• “Did social media affect your own self image?”
• “Did you talk to people you knew in real life or strangers online”

I plan on interviewing 2-3 other college students as they would be in the age range to be affected the most by COVID-19.

The prologue sets up the book’s core narrative by giving the reader’s background knowledge and context of the way social media (Facebook in particular) has effectively changed our lives and warped our perceptions worldwide through it’s accessible, widespread use of radical political ideas and conspiracy theories, and the obfuscation of the companies behind them.

Chapter 1 starts with a third perspective of Renay, a mother working at Silicone Valley. When she starts using Facebook for information on parenting, she finds multiple anti-vaccine groups which include unfounded multiple conspiracies such as the government secretly putting “chips” inside the vaccine to control their children. To add on, she finds out that joining one alt-right conspiracy theory group leads to multiple other conspiracy groups, essentially leading those who follow one down a rabbit hole.

Whether or not the idea that many of the social media companies actually didn’t endorse many of these conspiracy theorist groups and their impact, they could not take them down due to the exuberant societal and economic factor that these groups it brought them.

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